Living With an Incurable Disease
by TVObssessedGirl28
Summary: Ethan looks back on what's happened over the past 7 months.


Nothing could be worse than knowing that your mother is dying. Seeing her trying to deal with the pain while at the same time hiding the fact that she's hurting for the sake of you and your sibling is more painful to you. Or so you thought. But, then you discover something else. Something else that makes your world tumble down around you. Something that just doesn't quite sink in. The blank ink staring back at you is your fate. It's those words that turn your life into a waiting game. A waiting game where there's a ticking time bomb. A bomb that could detonate within a year or maybe 10. That's the beauty of this disease. It creeps up on you when you least expect it. It slowly eats away at you until you are nothing but, a shadow of yourself.

The moment you read your fate your mind goes blank. You feel numb and all you want to do in that moment is throw the piece of paper away. Throw it into the crashing sea so you don't have to inform your brother that he'll lose you in a few years time. Looking out across the sea the slight breeze blows the salt in the air into your eyes. You blink back the tears and as you stand with your back turned away from your family, your mother and your brother, your mind goes back to the story. The story of what could have been. You feel slightly guilty for lying to both of them, especially your mother. But, you did it out of kindness. You did it because you didn't want your mother to breathe her last breath knowing she was responsible for giving him the gene. You didn't want her to feel guilty. You wanted her to pass away peacefully without having to worry about what's going to happen to her son. As for your brother, you didn't want to be a burden to him. You saw what he did for mum, saw the sacrifice he would have to make when you start to develop symptoms. You didn't want that to happen. He deserved a life. Deserved to be happy and not be tied down because you were incapable of looking after yourself. When you looked down at the crumpled piece of paper in your hands for a minute you think of chucking it to the sea. Throwing it as if that would solve all your problems. You thought that if you didn't have the results you wouldn't have to accept and this life sentence wouldn't happen.

But, then taking a glance behind you and seeing your brother, his arms still wrapped around your mother you realise you're being selfish. He needs to know. You think about how's he going to cope when you go. When that happens he'll have no one. He would have lost both his mum and his brother. Knowing you had to tell him the truth no matter how hard it was you inhaled a breath and you walked over to where he still sat. Walking over to him you tried to act as if everything was alright, but the minute you started walking towards him, your brother looks up at you and sees your face. He knows something is wrong and you could see the change in expression on his face. You hear him as the question "what?". For a minute you can't tell him. For a minute you lose all the words in your mouth. You're about to tell him, but then decide against it. Instead, you hand him the piece of paper and walk away, not be able to watch his brother read his results.

That was 7 months ago. 7 months since your whole life turned upside down. Since then you've come to accept what's going to happen to you. Since then your relationship with your brother has been better than it has ever been, even better than when you were involved in the car crash. And since your diagnosis you had seen a change in your brother. You saw him step up and take responsibility. You saw him face his problems. Your brother had changed for the better. Or so you thought. Something happened to make you realise your brother had never changed, that he was still his same old self.

You realised your brother was still the same when you noticed he too had feelings for the same person you liked. You knew that he knew that you liked her and you thought that for once in your life your brother would be happy for you. You thought that he wouldn't make it into a competition like he always did. But, again you were wrong. He couldn't accept that someone liked you instead of him. And while you tried to, on many occasions, to ask her out you never seemed to have the confidence to do so. You would back out at the last minute. You knew your brother saw the hesitation in you and saw this as his opportunity to take his chance. In a way, it was your fault. Then again you would have thought that your brother would see your reluctance and help you out. But, Cal being Cal used that to his own advantage.

Though you would act if what was happening didn't matter there was something much deeper to the whole situation. The truth of it was, you were afraid. You knew what your life was going to become in a few years time you thought that by pushing Alicia away, away from you and in a way, in Cal's direction you wouldn't have to burden her with the truth. You wouldn't have to tell her that you were going to die. You guess that the reason why you were doing what you were doing was because if something did happen to you, at least you would know that the two people you cared about were happy. And that made you happy. Well, a bit happy. While you would love to be the one with the woman and a family with kids, you knew that was never going to happen. At least your brother could have the life. At least he could be the one to grow old with someone he loved.


End file.
